Spencer Perkins Center | Blog & News

We have exciting news—The SPC after school program has doubled the number of students on honor roll since the first term of the 2011-2012 school year! We would like to thank our donors and partners in ministry, after school program volunteers, staff, involved parents, and of course, the hard-working children. We are so very grateful for everyone who has committed themselves to these children. We celebrated this incredible achievement from our after school program students with an ice cream social.

This boost in grades makes planning for our May 2012 trip to the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee even more exciting! The trip is offered as a reward for good grades, character and behavior exhibited by the students in our program. It is our hope and prayer that each and every student who exhibits good grades, character, and behavior will be able to go on the trip free of cost. Our parents are doing fundraising events to help to cover the cost, but you, as a friend of the ministry can help to! For more information on how you can get involved and help our children escape the city and experience the beautiful Smokey Mountains, email our youth coordinator, Rachel Riesgraf.

Spring is always an exciting and energizing time at the Spencer Perkins Center! Each Spring, the SPC welcomes hundreds of college, high school, family, and adult mission teams from all across the country to participate in our Mission Team Experience. Without our mission teams, the SPC would not be able to serve our community in the same capacity. We are so very grateful for their service and cannot wait for our busiest mission team season to begin!

On February 11 we will welcome students from Barrington Christian Academy in Rhode Island for a week-long mission trip. February also brings our dear friends from With Justice for All from Iowa down to Jackson to serve. With Justice for All is a long-time friend and partner in ministry.

Mission teams are welcome to come year round! We are so grateful that the Lord blesses us with such faithful friends and partners in ministry. Are you part of a student group at your school? Is your church looking for somewhere to take a mission team? Are you looking to go on a family mission team? We would love for you to consider joining the work God is doing at the SPC! If you would like more information about the mission team experience click here or email Kelly, Special Projects Coordinator. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

The SPC is in the beginning stages of planning a trip to the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee for the children of our after school program. While this trip is still in the planning stages, parents, students, and staff are getting excited about it!

The trip to Tennessee is a reward for students who earn good grades, demonstrate good behavior, and show character development. This trip will offer students an opportunity to experience the beautiful campus of Camp Cedine where they will be able to participate in activities such as horseback riding, swimming, and other great adventures!

The parents of the SPC are actively involved in the planning and fundraising process. Pictured here are some parents and students at the second parent meeting held Wednesday, January 11. For more information about the trip and how you can support these children reaching for success, email Rachel Riesgraf.

Grandma Perkins’ Kitchen is another ministry that we are starting here at SPC. As John P. Perkins said, the purpose of this endeavor is to feed the people of our community physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Our goal is to teach the children that attend the center for after school care and those that attend the summer camp something that they will need throughout life. We are also going to be reaching out to the people in the community to teach them as well.

We are moving forward in our plight to rehabilitate the community. Currently, we are in the process of remodeling the kitchen at Antioch House. We started out with a basic kitchen: a four-burner stovetop, an oven, a sink, and a dishwasher, and a refrigerator. When the kitchen is complete, it will be an industrial kitchen. We will have the equipment that we need in order to ensure the greatest success possible. We will have a grill top/four burner range- complete with conventional ovens, a convection oven, prep tables, as well as many other things. It is going to be something wonderful.

We aim to be finished with the kitchen by January 19, 2012. The floors have been laid and the walls constructed. The kitchen is being fine-tuned to perfection. We are very excited to be so very close to realizing this dream.

Pictured below is what the dining room and kitchen look like now, nearing completion:

December 2011 brought a change in our community—the Spencer Perkins Center tore down a great eyesore in our target area. The house we tore down bordered SPC’s main campus and we have big plans for it! We are excited to share with you about how we were blessed with the property and the vision we have for using the land to glorify God.

One in five houses in our community are abandoned. That means one in five houses in our community, in addition to being an eye sore, bring a slew of problems in the lives of our neighbors. When we can, we try to rehabilitate homes, but the one in five houses we are talking about are beyond repair and need to be torn down. The house we demolished in December is no different—it needed to come down.

The staff of the SPC had been praying for years for the property bordering our campus—attaining this property would open the campus up and provide us with an opportunity to put another driveway to access the Center from the side. This may seem like a small detail, but for us it means that we would be able to begin to move on our vision for the campus—particularly the building of an independent living home for the seniors of our community.

The abandoned house sat for years and we prayed that we would be able to obtain it and use it for God’s glory. As our staff says, “We prayed on it and we shouted on it!” and the Lord delivered it to us. We received a notice in the mail with a real estate listing for the property. We were able to purchase it and pay the back taxes with the help of friends and supporters earlier in the year, but it was not until December that we were able to demolish it.

In December the house was demolished. An eyesore was removed. We are one step closer to the fulfillment of our dream and vision to serve the elderly in our community. A passage of scripture that is very dear to our ministry is Zechariah 8:1-6: “The Lord All-Powerful said to me: I love Zion so much that her enemies make me angry. I will return to Jerusalem and live there on Mount Zion. Then Jerusalem will be known as my faithful city, and Zion will be known as my holy mountain. Very old people with walking sticks will once again sit around in Jerusalem, while boys and girls play in the streets. This may seem impossible for my people who are left, but it isn’t impossible for me the Lord All-Powerful.”

This is our vision for our West Jackson Community. Click here to learn more about our Zechariah 8 Initiative.